I went years without a television set, and still do not have cable. Until a couple weeks ago, I’d never heard of THESE people and their reality television show, and still don’t really understand the interest in them. Still, sometimes you’ve unloaded your groceries and can’t help but let your eyes glance in the direction of the weekly scandal sheets.
I’ve said this many times before-geography is important, and we’d all do well to study it a bit more. That said, let me just go ahead and state what ought to be incredibly obvious; You don’t take your mistress on a getaway weekend to Utah. You go to Nevada. Nevada, not Utah. I know you think I’m going to make a Mormon joke, but I’m not. I’m going to talk about what a fucking moron this guy is. Moron, not Mormon, unless he is a Mormon, in which case, I’ll need to make a joke.
"Hey baby, wanna spend a weekend having hot sex in Utah?"
See what I mean? I’m sure Utah has something going for it (well, I’m not positive, but most places have some sort of redeeming qualities) but destination for a romantic getaway sounds like a bit of a stretch to me.
Geography. Study it kids. You never know when you’ll need it.
What a dumb ass.
I’ve been waiting years to do a headline with that many exclamation marks.
Anyone remember the last swine flu panic? I could go Google it, but I think it was around 1976-and we were all going to catch it and die. Maybe this is serious, I don’t know. I’d be a hell of a lot more concerned about keeling over from breathing the polluted air in Mexico City, than catching swine flu.
I also wonder if it would be so upsetting if it were cocker spaniel flu, or hamster flu, or turtle flu. Swine just sounds bad. You filthy swine. See what I mean?
Aren’t the dirty birdies going to be so jealous the pigs infected the humans first?
Tucked away between technical books no one wanted at a library sale, I found ten issues of the long defunct Eye Magazine from 1968. The large, oversized glossy was trying to cash in on the youth market, but being a Hearst magazine it kind of missed the mark. It was like Rolling Stone-for your grandparents. No matter, I quickly purchased them figuring they would at the very least, be fun for Danny.
Someone kept those magazines in pristine condition and they still had the pull-out posters (by Peter Max) and flexible records they used to give away as promotions.
Looking through nearly a year’s worth of magazines from 1968, I’ve been able to learn a few things:
Cops like to beat up middle class college students
Mint green eyeshadow and frosty white lipstick is always a bad choice
Buffy Ste. Marie was REALLY popular (she was in nearly every issue)
Everyone wore Jean Nate Bath Splash
Birth control was a lot less controversial than it is today
I will try and get some of the more interesting pages photographed and posted on line, but until then, you really will have to take my word for it-the green eyeshadow thing looks really bad.
Personally, I wouldn’t let my child have dental impressions, a mug shot and DNA taken as part of a safety kit -just in case they are abducted, but that’s not what I think is interesting about THIS story.
The event is being sponsored by a group of Freemasons at (wait for it) a private Christian school!
I have to think that is a real sign of progress when Christians invite Freemasons in to DNA type the children. Why, when I was a youngster that would have been akin to devil worship.
I still wouldn’t do it, and it is almost a crime how paranoid they make these poor parents, but I suppose it would be worse if the state were mandating it.
When Obama was asked who his pick to head the Treasury was my husband blurted out:
"Nominate Bill Ayres!"
Which actually would have been an excellent answer. It would have highlighted the absurdity of the "palling around with terrorists" rubbish, and McCain never would have been able to respond to it without cracking up.
My position is that the Obama campaign ought to point out McCain and Palin, "palling around with Henry Kissinger" but I know they’d never go there. I guess "terrorist" is kind of subjective.
If the Republicans are trying to get the working class vote, it might work better not to snicker and laugh at "community organising." Sure, it was a cheap shot at Obama, but the reaction from the audience with boisterous laughter summed up the Republican position on the poor and working class. As Saul Alinsky used to prove time and again, successful community organising relies on engaging the entire community and that usually would cut across party lines. He used to get bishops and labour leaders marching together. I pretty much expect that sort of idiocy from Giuliani, but I guess I wasn’t prepared for the enthusiastic audience response.
That whole chanting USA! USA! whilst waving fists and stomping feet doesn’t really project the best image either.
Though as the poet once noted, Nothing Gold Can Stay.
Sure, the thought of drunken teens barfing all over the antique rugs and furniture in Robert Frost’s summer home is pretty awful, but you can be sure if Frost himself had left barf stains on the carpet, they would be guarded as some sort of relic.
I suppose I ought to be outraged, but honestly I’m not. Frost hasn’t been dead long enough for me to think of his summer home as having historical importance. I don’t understand the whole, "make a pilgrimage to the home of a famous person" thing anyway.
In Red Cloud, Nebraska you can tour the home that Willa Cather lived in as a girl. I don’t advise doing it on the hottest day of the year as her upstairs attic bedroom hasn’t had a good airing out since she left it in 1925.
The solemn tour guide will point out the wallpaper Willa put up herself as though it were just shy of changing water to wine. There’s a degree of personality worship in these homes of the famous that’s hard to pin down, but is evident when encountered. Maybe the fact that the museum was still displaying the canned cantaloupe Willa’s mum had on the kitchen counter when she kicked off.
When we visited Eisenhower’s boyhood home in Kansas, we were shown the radio in the sitting room that his mother listened to for news of the War. Then, we went into the kitchen and saw her dishtowels. Interesting? Sure, in a way (oh, you thought I was going to say in a general way, didn’t you?) but no more so because they were in the home of a former president.
Sure, it is awful that kids have so little respect for the property of others that they went ahead and trashed Frost’s home. Still, it was vandalism, not some crime against humanity. Fetishising the personal belongings of people this way kind of detracts from who they were, and what they did. Personally, looking at Robert Frost’s paperweight and letter opener are less interesting than sitting down and reading A Swinger Of Birches. I might be more sympathetic to the outrage if they’d destroyed an original hand-written manuscript, but a broken chair and puke on the carpet does not send my outrage metre through the roof. Can you imagtine if we catalogue and save every item in a modern author’s home? I mean really, someday will we be touring Margaret Atwood’s home to view her half-used box of tampons?
All right, you know where to send the outraged email.
When I began blogging four years ago, it seemed like an act of resistance-hence the URL: Whynotresist.
Know what? I have resisted-the better part of four extremely long years. And we get Obama?! (Apologies for the"?!" punctuation but just how else do you convey the utter incredulity of handing the caucus (and upper hand in fundraising thereafter) to a guy that can speak for hours and manage to avoid taking a position on anything? Yeah, yeah, "hope", I get it, terribly clever. I’m hopeful. I’m so freaking full of hope it’s a wonder I don’t simply burst at the seams with optimism. Still, hope, being as encouraging as it is, it ain’t terribly helpful this late in the game. You know, like the old proverb: If wishes were horses beggars would ride? Sure, I hope I’ll win the lottery someday, but I’m not basing the rent payment on it-ya know?
Mind you, I’m not so thrilled with the rest of the Democratic contenders (though getting back to the concept of hope, I have to hope there’s a next life where Mike Gravel ends up running the country because that guy is just awesome in a way that very few people ever are) but I could hold my nose and vote for Edwards. I went to hear him speak in Council Bluffs last election cycle and as soon as he started into his whole Huey Long routine, he had me. Talking to a room full of middle class white people about race and poverty took some balls. Yeah, I know he’s The Breck Girl, but still.
As for the Republicans…oh well, never mind. If anyone needs me I’ll be learning how to apply makeup so I can look pretty while I’m submitting to my husband.
